


You Want It, You Take It, You Pay the Price

by dreamlittleyo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Bad Ideas, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-25
Updated: 2010-09-25
Packaged: 2018-05-22 05:40:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6067237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamlittleyo/pseuds/dreamlittleyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Jo hunt together now and then. One hunt in particular takes a lot out of them, and in the aftermath they cross lines they've never crossed before. (Warnings for alcohol and impaired judgment.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Want It, You Take It, You Pay the Price

It's not the chapel itself that's haunted. 

It's a relic buried in the basement, a tarnished crucifix that Jo finds four feet beneath the dirt floor. She finds the skeleton of a human hand beside it—an arm that disappears beneath more dirt floor, probably connecting to the rest of the body beyond. 

Jo knows the body belongs to a woman named Patricia Coleridge—but Patty isn't why she's here. No, it's Father Jerome Simmons that brought her—a dark legacy she has to remedy. The man tried to make a deal with the devil and found something a little more local instead. There's no name for what he found—some sort of malicious sprite that "blessed" the priest's crucifix and, through it, provided an apparently inexhaustible supply of healing magic.

But the magic had a price—it drained the father's soul bit by terrible bit, grim penance for every use—until there was nothing left but darkness, and the man simply withered away to nothing.

Someone must have seen it happening and put enough of the pieces together to figure out that the cross was trouble. Maybe even tried to destroy it, but of course they failed—saturated with this much dark magic, the metal won't be melting without the help of a heavy duty purification ritual—and so here the thing sits, buried and forgotten and twisting the souls of the congregation above it.

Jo plans on putting a stop to this before anyone else gets hurt. 

Once she's finished digging, she dons a pair of gloves—can't risk touching the thing with her bare skin when she's not sure just what will trigger the magic—and then carefully picks the crucifix out of the hole. It's a gruesome thing, a vivid sculpture of torment and pain, streams of blood painstakingly carved, dripping from a crown of thorns and other vicious wounds.

Jo wraps it in a towel, secures it with a generous amount of duct tape. She'll conduct the purification ritual elsewhere. It'll be easier with two, and she's got backup on the way. For now, she just needs to get out of here.

The further in her rearview she can put this tainted church, the better she'll feel.

 

****

\- — - — - — -

John Winchester drives into town two hours before sundown. Jo hasn't slept—doesn't plan on letting her guard down while she's got this damned thing in her possession—and she knows it's him from the angry rumble of his truck.

The sound is familiar and unmistakable through the thin walls of her motel room.

"Thanks for coming," she says after undoing the deadbolt and letting him in. "You ready to unravel some dark magic, or do you need dinner first?"

It's a mostly rhetorical question. They'll eat after their business is done. They always do. Priorities.

"Let's go," says John. He grabs the duffel she's already prepared and left waiting on the corner of her bed. 

"I already checked you into a room," Jo tells him as they head for his truck. "If you wanted to drop anything off before we go. It's just three doors down."

"It can wait," says John. He opens the driver's side door and tosses the duffel behind the seat.

Jo climbs into the passenger side and buckles in.

 

****

\- — - — - — -

They take their ritual to a weedy clearing a good twenty minutes outside of town. It's a bumpy ride along a winding dirt road, over fallen tree branches and potholes big enough to break a leg in.

The ritual's not as easy as it should be, doesn't go nearly as smoothly as Jo would like.

It's like the damn relic's got half a dozen defense mechanisms in place. Or just one mechanism, more accurately, but it's a doozy. As Jo starts in on the ritual chant and John burns a carefully calculated array of incense, suddenly there are specters filling the clearing, surrounding them.

Insubstantial. Impossible to touch. But haunting and distracting and all too personal. One of them wears her dad's face—exactly the way Jo remembers him, from just before he died—and begs her to stop. She ignores him and keeps reading, but it's damn hard to do.

Across the circle of salt and herbs, Jo sees a tall, gorgeous blond woman approach John. The woman leans over him, whispers into his ear—she's wearing a white nightgown, and her eyes are bright with fire. Jo can see from the widening of his eyes and the tightening of his fingers into fists that John is far from unaffected, but he doesn't trip up for even a moment. He holds up his end of the ritual, and when Jo shouts the last words of the chant she has to hide her eyes from a sudden blinding flash of sparks.

When she lowers her arm there's no crucifix in the center of the circle. Just a charred outline of dirt where the thing used to be.

Her heart hammers unhappily in her chest, her memories stirred into an uncomfortable tumult, and when she looks at John she can see darkness in his eyes.

"I need a drink," she informs him on their way back to the truck.

"Yeah," he agrees, kicking at the ground in muted frustration.

For long moments, neither of them says another word.

 

****

\- — - — - — -

They don't usually do this—going out to a bar, drinking together. Shared meals are one thing, not to mention the occasional ride to the emergency room and all the time they spend together researching, planning strategy.

But their alliance is a practical one. Not social. There's too much history between them—too much bad blood—for it to ever be more.

Except here they are.

The atmosphere is thick and smoky, the bar poorly lit and packed too full. This isn't Jo's preferred locale. It's an unpleasant space, claustrophobic and antisocial all at once, and the bartender is a surly woman with her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. She serves up drinks with a sulky, grudging reluctance that says she could give a flying fuck if you bother to tip.

But it's the only bar in walking distance from their motel, and after the night they've had, neither one of them wants to get stuck playing sober cab.

They sit side-by-side at the bar, because there are no tables open, and even here they're crowded together by the heavy crush of people. The stools are scooted too close together, and Jo can feel John's body heat pressed all along her side. It's more distracting than it should be, and she downs a rough swallow of whiskey so she can wave the bartender over and ask for another.

John's leg is pressed against hers, knee to thigh, and the man's brooding profile is making Jo's gut clench in ways it never has before.

They've been working together off-and-on for going on three years now—ever since the world almost ended but didn't, with the Winchesters at the center of the shit-storm and the rest of the world left to stare and blink and wonder what happened—and the new, anxious flutter of anticipation in her chest is something Jo's got no idea how to react to.

It's probably the alcohol. Even buzzed like this, Jo knows a bad idea when it grabs her by the gut. She sips from her refilled glass more slowly and tries to ignore the heat along her side.

Men approach her off and on as the night progresses. They approach more and more frequently the later it gets, to the point where Jo gives up on even politely feigning hospitality and starts telling them to fuck off the moment they get close.

After hopeful jackass number eleven wastes her time for a full five minutes, John actually gives her a sympathetic look and asks, "You okay?"

"Fine," she grumbles. "Contemplating violence."

When Number Twelve closes in, John doesn't even give the man time for an opening volley before he drapes an arm across Jo's shoulders in an unmistakably possessive gesture. The man wanders off looking morose, and John's arm stays.

Jo tosses back the rest of her whiskey and signals to the bartender for another.

 

****

\- — - — - — -

They move through the damp, cool night on legs that are steady despite the amount of alcohol they've consumed.

Jo's worked in a bar long enough to function smoothly even through the murky haze of way-too-much-to-drink. She never drank on the job, of course—that was the number one rule, the one she never dared to break—but alcohol was never far from hand, and Jo knows exactly where her limits lie. The world spins threateningly around her now, but she navigates the push and pull of gravity with confidence.

John moves almost as steadily beside her, and Jo is impressed. He outpaced her by plenty, and even with his bulkier masculine frame, he has to be feeling it hard. 

They don't lean on each other as they move, but their elbows brush together with every step. Jo is nearly overcome by the sudden urge to take John's hand in her own—to twine their fingers together and hold on for dear life. She wants to touch him, and the urge grows stronger with every step.

It's all she can do to keep her hands to herself.

They finally reach the motel, and the night is a deep, stifling black around them. There's a lamppost at the edge of the parking lot, but the bulb is dead, leaving the wall and sidewalk bathed in darkness. There's enough light coming from the flickering Vacancy sign that Jo can see everything she needs to, but there's still something surreal about the moment, coated in shadows as it is.

She fumbles for her keys, gets them out. Moves for the door only to find her way blocked by the arm John shoots out, palm pressed to the wall, deliberately blocking her path. 

She can feel his breath on the side of her face. When she turns her head to meet his eyes, she finds a startling fierceness there. The heat sets off something low and wanting in her stomach, makes her feel eager and ashamed and hungry for something that it's suddenly a struggle to remind herself is a bad idea. 

She shifts her entire body until she's leaning back against the wall—staring him in the eye with what she hopes is a mix of interest and challenge and invitation. She probably looks more startled than anything, but it's hard to plan strategy through the quick, thrumming racket of her pulse. 

He doesn't touch her. For all that his expression promises fire and friction and harsh, welcome contact—for all that he's bracketing her against the wall, leaving only a narrow avenue of escape—Jo senses that the ball is in her court. He's not going to cross that last inch of space between them without an express invitation. He's not going to push any harder than he already has, maybe from some lingering sense of chivalry.

Jo thinks, for a moment, about what it would be like to have him simply _take_. The idea sends shivers along her skin, and she can't decide if they signal fear or desire. A moot point, of course, since John is waiting for _her_ to make the next move. He won't be taking anything that isn't expressly offered.

"Come inside," she hears herself say, and has no idea where she managed to find her voice.

 

****

\- — - — - — -

He undresses her with rough, hurried hands and barely stands still while she impatiently returns the favor.

Now that they're here, neither one of them wants to wait. She wants his hands on her _yesterday_ , and anxious desire coils beneath her ribs, makes her itch to touch him everywhere, to get her hands beneath his shirt, to finish fighting with his stupid, stubborn belt buckle, to slide her fingers through his hair.

He kisses her like a hurricane, sharp and demanding and barely contained. His tongue slips past her lips and she gasps against his mouth, wraps her arms around his neck, lets him lift her into the air and carry her towards the bed.

She chucks her bra across the room—the last of her troublesome clothing—while he gives his worn, thin t-shirt the same treatment and slides out of his pants with a focused coordination that leaves Jo aching.

"Jesus, get over here," she breathes, tugging him towards her. It's just them now, just naked skin and friction, and when he kisses her it's with his full weight pressing her down into the mattress. She slides against him experimentally, feels him groan into her mouth, then along her throat, and Jo's head is spinning—maybe from the way he's touching her, or maybe from the sudden shift in gravity and the warping twist of alcohol in her system, but either way it feels amazing. Disconnected and eager and, more than anything, hungry.

She wants him so badly she can taste it, like the lingering flavor of his kiss on her tongue, and the way his hands hold her to the bed—the way his teeth tease along her throat and his fingers find all the right, sensitive spots—is working her up so hard she'll be begging for it soon.

He materializes a condom from somewhere, which makes Jo groan with relief—she's got a couple in her wallet, but her wallet is all the way across the room and she's greedy enough, hurried enough, to be grateful she doesn't have to shove him off her long enough to go get one.

She gets a hand between them, helps guide him in, and when he thrusts inside her it's all she can do to wrap her thighs around him and hold on. 

She rolls her hips up against him when she's got some semblance of coordination back, an undulating shiver of movement that makes him moan against her collarbone and push deeper in with a stuttering rhythm. 

Jo comes first, and John doesn't stop—and when he slips a hand between them to coax her to a second orgasm, Jo gasps his name against his throat.

 

****

\- — - — - — -

He stays in her room until morning, and dawn brings with it a sort of awkward, inevitable silence.

Jo's head throbs a little—nothing so severe as a full-blown hangover, but an achy discomfort that makes her long for an aspirin and a glass of chilled water. She doesn't dare move first, though. She's lying on her side, with John's arm draped across her stomach, John's body spooned close and warm behind her. They're neither of them asleep, but both are playing possum.

It can't last, Jo realizes with a sigh. Neither one of them wants to make the first move, but someone has to. 

So she shifts in John's arms, rolls onto her back and then onto her other side, until she's looking him in the eye from far too close—she'd back off a little, but there's nothing behind her except the edge of the bed and the hard floor beyond. 

John looks surprised to see her face.

"Hi," she says.

"Hi," John answers cautiously.

Jo can already see a threatening edge of guilt in his eyes—a quiet fear of the foggy and unforgivable. Jo's own memory of the night before is muddy but complete. She doesn't know if the same is true for him.

"Interesting night," she says, trying to head his out-of-proportion guilt trip off at the pass. She knows his type, knows he'll start apologizing and never stop if he gets it in his head that he took advantage—or worse. Besides, if any advantage was taken last night, Jo knows damn well that it went both ways.

"That's one word for it," John concedes. He still looks worried, but the shadows in his eyes are gradually receding.

Jo considers him for a long moment. She thinks about his mouth, and his hands, and the way he made her feel last night. She thinks about how, unexpected though it was, she might not mind giving it another try—sober this time.

She can see the questions he wants to ask shining in his face. Questions like ' _Are we okay_?' and ' _Did I hurt you_?' and ' _What the fuck were we thinking_?' But he doesn't ask them. He's clearly waiting for _her_ to make the call on how they're dealing with this. On the one hand it makes her think a little less of him—putting the full weight of decision on her shoulders like this, it's hardly fair. On the other hand, maybe this is the only way for things to go. Maybe it _has_ to be on her, because of who he is and what they are. Maybe there's no way around it.

She can get them started anyway. That much shouldn't be too hard.

"Look," she says, and she keeps her voice as light and non-threatening as she can. "I'm going to take a shower. And then you're buying me breakfast. And we can talk about this or not, whatever, but I'd really appreciate it if you didn't freak out. Okay?"

John gapes at her a moment, obviously startled by her bluntness, but nods in wordless agreement.

"Good," she says, and slips from his arms and out of the bed. She doesn't bother covering herself. He's already seen everything, and Jo's already pretty sure she doesn't mind showing him again.

She stops at the bathroom door and tosses a deliberate smirk over her shoulder.

"Don't expect me to save you any hot water," she says, then disappears inside.

 

****

\- — - fin - — -

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow when I was originally reposting all-my-fic-ever to AO3, this one fell through the cracks. So here it is, about a decade late for the party.


End file.
